


wish for falling

by hotmesslewis



Category: Lewis and Clark
Genre: Historical Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Musings on Death, Rather Explicit Implied Sex and Daydreamed Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 03:31:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmesslewis/pseuds/hotmesslewis
Summary: The Falls--off a cliff, of the Missouri, and in love.





	wish for falling

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on an historical incident. Fun fact: I wrote my bipolar bad boy's scene of disordered thinking and insight before I even knew there were words for such things! Helps to know the beast yourself, I guess. Also, I apologize for the somewhat confusing layout of time in this story. But I don't apologize enough to bother changing it.

William Clark always seemed to fall asleep so shortly after he and Meriwether Lewis made love, and sometimes Lewis wondered why.

Often it was a worry, more than merely a wonder—why, _how_ could Clark fall asleep so easily?

_Maybe it didn’t really mean all that much to him?_

Banish the thought! as Lewis lay there, the sweat and the seed of their passion still drying on him, wrapped so tightly in Clark’s arms under the weight of the animal skins they slept in, so tightly, _almost possessively_ , and the thought made Lewis smile faintly. Lewis lay naked, the shirt in which he normally slept tossed carelessly across the tent when Clark had torn it from his body before taking him that night, though Clark himself had kept his shirt on as he rolled Lewis onto his stomach and pressed him into the ground, laying on top of him, moving in him until Lewis simply had to kiss him. The memory of Clark’s weight on him, the smell of Clark next to him and still lingering on him, in his very pores, the feel of Clark’s shirt like a whisper against his skin. It was nearly enough to tempt Lewis to wake Clark, to suck on his neck and nip at his pulse, to peel Clark’s shirt off Clark’s chest and press his face, his tongue into the warmth above Clark’s heart, to fill him, bring him to rise again, and wouldn’t that prove how much Clark loved him?

But he wouldn’t—the man was exhausted, _let him sleep_. Already Lewis thought with slight guilt about the coming morning, when he would rouse himself before the redheaded man, untangling himself from the covering of animal furs and of Clark, stealing across the tent to slip back into his own shirt before the day caught him out in his nakedness and his sin.

_It was strange how—_

Clark moved around him. Pressed his body closer, their legs intertwining, his arm wrapping more around Lewis, pulling Lewis closer to him. A name, murmured with a content sigh, “Meri.” The red head nuzzling against him, settling on his chest. For a moment Lewis half-hoped that Clark was again awake, but he clearly was not, and Lewis questioned this hope. Surely, this was better—that Clark wanted to be near to him even in his sleep?

_Close to you, Meriwether, or just close to warmth?_

Close to _him_ , damn it. He said the name—

_—in a dream—_

—but that was better still! Clark _dreamed_ of him, wanted nearness even when he could not be awake and _wanting_ him, surely it meant so much more when someone dreamt of you, didn’t it? Could he, Meriwether Lewis, such an insignificant, unimportant, _useless_ person really mean that much to anyone, let alone someone so magnificent—

_Stupid, childish thoughts._

Lewis sighed and looked at the dark, soft ceiling above them, patched over and again by this point in the expedition. _How could he even still doubt—_

He left off, returned to his former thoughts.

_It was strange how—_

His fingers, smoothing back Clark’s tousled hair, which somehow still managed to flame in the total darkness of the tent; how was that possible? He examined Clark’s brow—an odd vulnerability to it, really, the early formation of furrowed lines of concern around his eyes, but then Clark had the soft impressions of a thousand laughs and smiles already engraved around his mouth, too. _Magnificent man._

_It was strange how much falling in love truly did feel like falling off a cliff._

Stupid, childish thought. Lewis smiled wryly—as preposterous as the sentiment in some silly love poem.

But it was true.

_Oh, Lord, why was it true?_

It had been months; but the memory of falling off a cliff, peculiar in his mind, confused memory of sensation and color and emotion, but not thought, there had been no time for thought. Undoubtedly that’s why he felt that he recalled it so poorly?

_Try to remember, Meriwether._ These things felt oddly important in the lateness of night, in the earliness of morning, in the exhaustion of his body and, reluctant to acknowledge or admit, of his thoughts. Organize, file, catalog, set straight these sensations, colors, emotions. Identify the patterns; make sense of the event. Construct thoughts for that which had none. So incredibly important, right in this moment, because he had to determine: why was falling off a cliff so similar to falling in love? A logical problem, not an emotional one.

_The Sensation_ : standing, feet planted wide apart, filling the lungs with air, then releasing it expansively. The thump of the dog’s tail against the leg. Sudden—a give, a break, the ground was no longer beneath the feet: falling. An avalanche of dirt and rock and man, rushing to the water. Legs bent, feet seeking purchase, arms thrown wide. Odd—a knife held tight in the hand, plunged into the cliff: stopping. Burning in the arm holding to the knife holding to the cliff, the other arm, the legs, the body dangling; the other hand found the knife, the feet (he thought?) found the wall of the cliff. Somehow on top again, but Lewis couldn’t quite remember the climbing (surely he must have climbed?). Unexpected—solid ground beneath the feet: how could he miss the falling? But he did. And why?

_Wrong, Meriwether. Missing is not a sensation._

_The Colors:_ ah, this was far more simple. Begin: soft blue, richer than a robin’s egg, dappled spots of white like a fawn—the sky. Tainted colors, blue moldered brown and foggy, tan seeming brighter than it should, poor shades given harsh light, reflections in a murky mirror—the Missouri. ( _He must have looked down as he fell; he had not realized that. But of course he had looked down; how could he not?_ ) A flash of white—strange: something conjured of his mind, he could only suppose. The tan, the warm color of dirt, earth, like a soft deer hide, the occasional flash of dark brown or green (plants? Trees?), and a black cut where his knife entered—the cliff.

_Yes. The colors were much easier._

Finally, then.

_The Emotion:_ oh, but this was the hard one. Two emotions, yes, that he knew. Exhilaration, and fear.  ( _What about missing, Meriwether?_ But, no, that wasn’t quite an emotion, was it? Ignore that, move on; why should he miss the falling, anyway?) But in what order? Unsure, the memory failed him here, he could only guess, use logic. One as he stood at the top of the cliff, the other as he fell. Logic—exhilaration at the top, fear on the way down. Yes.

Exhilaration before the fall.

Fear during the fall.

_Yes._

That made perfect sense, did it not?

_Of course it did._

Repeat the thoughts, make them true.

_Exhilaration during the fall._

_Fear before the fall._

But his thinking was muddled, _and why?_ He didn’t know.

_Wrong, Meriwether. Try again._

He did.

Exhilaration before the fall. ( _Yes_.) Exhilaration during the fall. ( _No!_ )

Fear during the fall. ( _Of course._ ) Fear before the fall. ( _Wrong! Why would that be?_ )

He couldn’t understand; his mind wandered to another tangent. The fall—the Falls? The five Great Falls of the Missouri? What were his emotions there, again?

_Exhilaration at the Falls._

Of course.

_Fear at the Falls._

No! But why? Was there fear in everything that he did?

_Yes._

He would not accept it.

But all of this was irrelevant, the Great Falls. The matter: falling off a cliff ( _and how such an endeavor related to the feelings of falling in love_ ).

Try again, Meriwether Lewis.

_Exhilaration_ (fear) before ( _during_ ) _the fall._

His thoughts were confused, incoherent, illogical. Another glass of whiskey—that would straighten them.

( _Had he even had any whiskey?_

No, the Corps ran out of their rations _months_ ago, whatever were you thinking, Meriwether Lewis. _Oh, well, then a glass of whiskey would do him all of the good in the—_

But there _was_ no—)

Clark, shifting and sighing again, a thigh rubbing over Lewis’s leg, a hand spreading across Lewis’s shoulder, and that feeling of intoxication, that confusion of thought, it came from this man, William Clark, and the memory of the smell and the feel of him, the touch of him still, and his _love_ , so much _fear_ , so much _exhilaration_ , like falling off a cliff . . .

Meriwether Lewis finally drifted to sleep.

-

A dream, then.

Of the cliff, and falling.

Oh, how many times would he dream of it?

_Standing on the edge of the ridge, looking over the sky, the water, the land, and that feeling of fullness, completeness, even in his isolation. Was this what he meant when he said “exhilaration?” Still it seemed somehow too far away. Meriwether Lewis did not simply want to survey the sun, the land, the quick river—he wanted to be a part of them. One step closer to the edge, trusting his legs, trusting the earth, even as the toes of his boots were over the precipice, and then. Ground giving way, the pull of gravity, falling. The jolt within in him harsher than the jolt of the cliff breaking away beneath him—was this what he meant when he said “fear?” The rushing of the river beneath him, towards him, falling three hundred feet to the hard water, the land falling around him—the certainty of death. Strange thought, as he fell, but did he say it aloud?_

_“Hello, old friend.”_

_Old friend—the rocks, avalanching around him? The river, hungry for his body? Death?_

_He couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t know if it mattered._

_But then salvation, in the form of a quick hand, a deep thrust of the knife, the instinct to live stronger than even the desire. Another jolt, counterintuitive, as the knife caught in the wall of the cliff: sweet salvation. Strange that it should hurt as much as it did. The burning in his arm was almost intolerable, and wouldn’t it have been easier to let go, to fall, to die? Hello, old friend._

_The dream varied from the memory, because in the dream he reached up after his knife fixed in the side of the cliff, and he caught a falling rock. Continues, as if the leftover months, years of expedition never happened, and Meriwether Lewis returned to Washington, gentleman, explorer, hero. Presenting his discoveries to the President, the public, the great minds—at the center of it, this rock._

_Presented to the eminent thinkers, scientists and philosophers, the rock. Meriwether Lewis, cracking it open, splitting it in half, fragile as an eggshell. One half given to the scientists for further study, with a sentence: “This is exhilaration.” The other, given to the philosophers, another sentence: “This is fear.”_

_Intense study and analysis, to know all that they could about this rock, until one of the philosophers (clever bastard) realized the scientists also studied from the other half of the same rock. “Why, they are one and the same!”_

_No. Not quite—look closer._

_“Yes.”_

_And then a scientist spoke, with contempt and disapproval. “This isn’t fear or exhilaration at all. This is love.”_

_Meriwether Lewis, in his embarrassment, longing to argue. “No, it is a rock.”_

_But they couldn’t understand him._

_Months had passed, but wouldn’t it have been easier to just keep falling?_

_Exhilaration. Fear. Love._

_Hello, old friend._

-

The night after the day that Meriwether Lewis almost died, William Clark woke in the darkness of the captains’ tent three times, crying out.

The first two times, he was content to see the shadowed form of Lewis across the tent, to hear his heavy breathing, but the third time a nameless fear overwhelmed him, and he had to be sure. Striking a sulfur match (marvelous new invention), lighting a small candle, and there he was, fast asleep still, despite the sudden light seeming far too bright in the night and the tent.

Clark couldn’t remember what, precisely, he dreamed of, but he knew it was horrible, not to be thought on. It was the sort of dream that didn’t simply fade when he woke, sweating and shaking, but that he fought to forget. Even now, the vague remembrances swirled like a mist in front of his eyes, when he gazed on Lewis’s face, half hidden in his pillow, from across the tent.

Lewis had returned to camp that evening, full of verve and swagger following his afternoon of solitary exploring, and told his story with unusual excitement, almost a childlike glee. A simple statement to start—“I fell off a cliff today, and nearly died”—before weaving and embroidering upon his tale. Young George Shannon listened with rapt attention, eyes shining as he hung on Lewis’s every word, longing for an adventure of his own; Peter Cruzatte and John Ordway smirked at each other across the fire, doubting the exact details of Lewis’s story, wondering if his fall were really quite so sudden or so hard, if the cliff were quite so high. Clark couldn’t look Lewis in the eye when he told the story, but sat instead staring into the fire (in another man, his expression might have been mistaken for one of brooding, but not in cheerful Billy Clark). That night he wrote a few terse lines of Lewis’s adventure in his journal—“saved himself by the assistance of his Knife.” There was a strange and intense pleasure in writing those words.

The dim light of the candle playing across Meriwether Lewis’s face, and William Clark couldn’t help but consider what a handsome man Lewis was. Not an unusual thought, all things considered—the tall, trim man, with his pleasant face, quick eyes that seemed to vary between blue and gray, the long nose, the lips, thin but attractively shaped; something in his face still spoke of boyhood. And his hair, light brown and feather-like, unruly, never laying flat, despite Lewis’s best attempts to tame it, a patch in the front or at the top perpetually sticking up. Clark had teased him for this in their days as young soldiers, when Clark had been Lewis’s commanding officer for six brief months, and their friendship began and quickly solidified. Even then, _Clark’s thoughts . . ._ As he would ruffle Lewis’s hair, a brotherly gesture, and threaten report him for insubordination if he couldn’t tame it somehow (Lewis had worn his hair slightly longer in those days, again, against regulations), and Lewis would blush from his neck as he laughed.

And it was a pleasure, just to be able to touch Meriwether Lewis.

Strange thought, perversion—this was where the sin crept in. To find Lewis handsome: normal, socially acceptable, undeniable, quite honestly.

But to want to touch him, and like this, all over.

To want to lay with him.

Oh, God, to have actually thought those words! The ultimate of sins, without doubt, because this wasn’t just a handsome man, this was his closest, most trusted friend, Meriwether Lewis, his captain, and suddenly, dark, secret nighttime thoughts, he wanted him in that way more than anything in the world.

It was _wrong_ to think of other men this way, Clark knew, and worse still when those men trusted you, trusted in your friendship.

Dark, secret nighttime thoughts—how could Lewis still sleep so soundly? Clark shook off his covers and crawled across the tent in his nightshirt; sat next to Lewis’s pallet on the ground and watched him as he slept. The candle—the light was right in Lewis’s face, but still he slept through it, deeply, but Clark supposed it took a lot out of a man to fall off a cliff, to nearly die, didn’t it? Lewis lay on the ground on his side, one arm under the bundle of clothes Lewis used as a pillow, the other hand curled tight against his chest, his legs bent, and the covers, tantalizing, half-off him in the late heat of May.

Meriwether Lewis. He had almost _died_ today, and suddenly William Clark was so desperate for him.

A bold hand, brushing back the hair from his brow, feeling those feathers with more tenderness than he’d ever allowed himself before. Lewis didn’t stir, dreamt on peacefully, and Clark grew bolder still. But, to a small degree, it wasn’t Clark, the friend, who was acting—surely this was some monster, lusting for his dearest friend, moving his hand of its own volition. The hand, taking a loose corner of Lewis’s light quilt (justification: it was half off the man, anyway), and flicking it away from Lewis entirely.

William Clark gazed on Meriwether Lewis in full, the sleeping man barely covered by his thin cotton nightshirt, and felt the inescapable pull of lust, but also something else, something that stabbed in his chest.

As he had slept, he had tossed, and Lewis’s nightshirt had tangled around him, twisting snug around his waist, hardly covering his hips, his ass, his upper legs. Oh, and Clark could see so much of him, _those legs_ , the muscles of his thighs tight under the skin, even in the candlelight, even as he slept. It was so hard to see those thighs (had he dreamed of them before? Had he wondered how they would feel, to his hands, or wrapped tightly around him?) and not rub his hands over them.

And then, at Lewis’s hips, between them, the mystery. Likely it was simply the way that the fabric twisted and fell around him, but could it also be? Against Lewis’s leg, could it be, and was there some?

Oh, William Clark, you had been so bold already this night (but why? He wondered that to himself—these thoughts weren’t new to him, but never had he acted on them before, and why tonight, of all nights? Was it because Meriwether Lewis had almost died that day? Strange magnitude in that thought), what was to stop him from rolling Lewis on to his back, from laying his hands against Lewis’s firm abdomen and pushing the cotton nightshirt up from around his hips, to see that mystery for himself? And, hell, if he was going to be that bold, what was to stop him from pressing his hands into the skin and the dark hair surrounding this mystery, from lowering his head to it, from taking it into his mouth, and from tasting Meriwether Lewis?

Now, this _was_ a strange and sinful thought—never before had Clark longed to taste the seed of another man, but he did want to take Lewis’s seed. And why, beyond purely lust? Was there anything beyond that?

But, no. This was wrong, on all counts. Meriwether Lewis was his _friend_.

Clark gazed at Lewis’s legs and the way the thin fabric of his nightshirt fell in shadows against Lewis’s chest, and tried to imagine Lewis with a woman. Her legs spread around him, he pushing into her, holding her hips or with his fists pressing into the bed and she, a poorly-painted prostitute, tearing at a pillow. Both Lewis and the woman screamed the wrong name as they came in Clark’s fantasy, but neither of them really cared, because there was no emotion, no affection in this—it was merely an action, taking care of an animal need.

It was so hard to imagine Meriwether Lewis loving a woman, for some reason—a disheartening thought to Clark, as he sat by the sleeping man in the candlelight and watched his face.

But how had he gotten to love? He had been thinking about lust, dark, nighttime thoughts, and his desire to pull Lewis up from the ground and shove him against the wall and take him, Clark pushing his way inside of Lewis, holding the full of his body and his heat against him, Clark’s tongue against the back of Lewis’s neck and feeling the heat of Lewis’s infuriating flush. And Lewis, how would he react? Powerfully, Clark hoped, bending his arms backward to run his hands through Clark’s hair, to pull Clark toward him for a kiss. And could Clark possibly make Meriwether Lewis come for him?

Growing hard at the thought of it—William Clark’s shame.

Oh, but wouldn’t that be something, if Lewis would come for him and say his name and say that he—

Love, again.

Fuck it all.

Lewis shifted slightly in his sleep, and Clark finally had to admit it to himself—it was love. Fuck it all, he was in love with Meriwether Lewis. His best friend, his co-captain, the man he would be spending the next two years with, oh, good Christ, how could he stand it?

Because Clark didn’t just want to lay with Lewis, he wanted to touch him, in every way possible. To hold Lewis’s hand, to pull Lewis into his arms for a pure embrace, simply to _touch_ Lewis and have him know what that touch actually meant; _love_. To see Lewis’s smile, quick as a knife thrust into a cliff face to catch a falling body, or hear his laugh, rolling like a waterfall, and know that it was for him, Billy Clark, and him alone; _love_.

Too much to hope for, of course.

It could never be.

Lewis shifted slightly in his sleep, lifting his face out of his makeshift pillow slightly. Clark couldn’t help but remember his dream, his nightmare—Lewis, falling from the cliff, until he thrust with the knife, caught in the cliff. But still he fell, or did he let go? Perhaps that’s what worried Clark most—did Meriwether Lewis let go of his salvation, in this dream? Hitting the water—did he sink or did he float? Again, Clark couldn’t remember clearly, but the vision following that—the blank face, the dead eyes, no question as to their color now, they were gray, and so, so dead.

It scared Clark shitless, to think of his life without Lewis. And it hurt, so much, more than he could possibly say. Such unbelievable pain.

No wonder he woke, sweating, crying out.

That, and the knowledge that he was in love with Meriwether Lewis.

Lewis, stirring again; he opened his eyes, blinked once, and smiled at Clark in his sleepiness.

Impossible to know what he thought. Did he think he was dreaming still?

But it was enough to give William Clark hope.


End file.
